Politician John Ensign may want to rethink this whole hardline, mean-Jesus, Promise Keeper, demon casting-out, fundie fringe religion thing, because it doesn’t seem to be working real well for him.  I mean, he’s gotten into a heap of trouble he could have avoided if he’d

a) been a free love fiscal conservative;  or

b) actually been able to exorcise his own demons

Bruce Wilson writes:

Senator John Ensign belongs to a Pentecostal denomination, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, that promotes a new health care paradigm in which both physical and psychological maladies can be cured through the casting out of demons. In the new approach, individuals can even heal themselves by exorcising their own demons

Hot damn!  Supposedly these do-it-yourself Pentacostal, evangelical, dominionist exorcisms can relieve the afflicted of:

the demons of sexual incest, lust, astrology, cancer, handwriting analysis, intellect, philosophy, and "anal fissures"

which kinda reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s essay  "The Me Decade and Third Great Awakening"  where a women tries to use EST to heal her hemorrhoid.

"Take your finger off the repress button.” Everybody was supposed to let go, let all the vile stuff come up and gush out. They even provided vomit bags, like the ones on a 747, in case you literally let it gush out! Then the trainer told everybody to think of “the one thing you would most like to eliminate from your life.” And so what does our girl blurt over the microphone?

“Hemorrhoids!”

Maybe Ensign needs to switch up his methods and try fixing himself via EST or even the Papist hipster way. FearWerx’s DYI Exorcism kit is now on sale for $5. And it comes with its own vomit bag!